FORMER CALIF. GOVERNOR HOPEFUL HELD ON DRUG CHARGE

TAHOE CITY, Calif. (Reuters) - Police arrested the Libertarian Party's 1998
candidate for California governor and his wife after investigators found
hundreds of marijuana plants at their home, officials said Wednesday.

Lt. Mike Allen of the North Tahoe Task Force said Steve Kubby, 52, and his
wife Michele were arrested Tuesday and were being held on $100,000 bail
apiece at the Placer County Jail in this resort area near Lake Tahoe.

Kubby, who placed fourth overall in the November election with one percent
of the vote, and Michele Kubby were to be formally arraigned Thursday on
charges of cultivation and possession of marijuana and conspiracy, Allen said.

The Kubby's attorney, Dale Wood, said the former candidate and his wife
were both medically approved to use marijuana under the provisions of
California's landmark 1996 state law.

``The D.A.'s position is hogwash,'' Wood said, adding that the high bail
was ridiculous. ``If somebody took a baseball bat to their neighbor, they
would be free for less,'' he said.

Kubby, a strong proponent of the 1996 law known as Prop. 215, has used
marijuana for some 20 years as part of a treatment program for cancer and
hypertension, Wood said. Michele Kubby also has a medical prescription for
the drug, he said, but added that he did not know what specific ailment she
suffers from.

Wood said the Kubbys intended to argue that the estimated 300 marijuana
plants found on their property at Olympic Valley, Calif., were entirely for
personal use.

Police estimated that the plants could produce up to a pound of marijuana
apiece, with a total street value of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

California's medical marijuana initiative was all but derailed last year by
Republican state Attorney General Dan Lungren and the federal government,
which argued that existing anti-narcotics laws prevented any legal use of
marijuana.

But Lungren's Democratic successor Bill Lockyer has said he hopes to find a
way to implement the state law, which allowed people suffering from AIDS,
cancer and other serious ailments to use the drug under a doctor's
guidance.